But in Braj Mandal ( the area around Mathura city ( comprising of Mathura, Gokul, Vrindavan, Govardhan, Barsana, Nandgaon, etc ) ) it is played for one full week, commencing from Holi Day.
I believe that one who has not seen Braj ki Holi has not seen India
Throughout the week, commencing from Holi day, Braj Mandal is full of colours everywhere. Skits are performed in several places showing Lord Krishna’s life and ‘raas leela’ i.e. dalliance with the gopis ( girls ) of Vrindavan, and especially with his beloved Radha.
On the first day of the week, i.e. Holi day ( which will be this year tomorrow, 25th March ) there will be ‘lathmaar Holi’ at Barsaana, a place about 40 kms from Mathura city. There is a famous Radha temple in Barsaana on a small hill, which I have visited. There women of 80, girls of 5, and females of all ages in between, can be seen dancing all the time.
In Barsaana people do not say ‘Jai Shri Krishna’ as is said elsewhere, but ‘Radhe Radhe’. That is because they believe that Krishna deserted them when he was attacked by Jarasandh and fled to Dwarka in Gujarat, but Radha remained with them.
On this day boys of Nandgaon, which is about 7-8 kms from Barsaana ( and where it is believed Krishna had spent part of his childhood ) march all the way to Barsaana, where the womenfolk beat the former on their heads ( probably symbolising their anger at Krishna who had deserted their Radha ). The boys have to wear protective headgear, else they may be seriously injured, so fierce is the beating.
The last day of the Holi week in Braj is ‘Dauji ka Huranga’. Dauji is Balaram, the elder brother of Lord Krishna, and there is his temple situated about 30 kms from Mathura where this event takes place. There is a square courtyard there surrounded by buildings, filled with 1 or 2 feet coloured water. On this occasion the womenfolk tear off the upper garments of the menfolk there, dip them in the coloured water, and then beat the menfolk with those torn clothes ( probably symbolising getting back at the ill treatment they got from their menfolk for 364 days in the year ). In the meantime colour is flying around everywhere in the air.
I have appealed to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to also play Holi
Bill Tammeus is my American friend, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. USA with his wife Marcia.
He had come to Allahabad with his parents and 3 sisters in 1957. Bill’s father was an agriculture expert from Illinois University who had come for 2 years to India to teach modern methods of agriculture in the Allahabad Agriculture Institute.
Bill was admitted to Boys High School, Allahabad (where the famous Indian filmstar Amitabh Bachchan had also studied ), and we were classmates from 1957-1958. He was then about 12 years old.
Later, he went back with his parents to America, and became a journalist in the Kansas City Star (where the great writer Ernest Hemingway had once worked). However, we remained in touch since then, through letters which would take 10 days or more to reach ( there was no such thing as email then ).
Thus, we have been friends for about 66 years, quite a record !
Bill has since retired, and does social work, including serving as a part time preacher in his Presbyterian Church ( for which reason I call him ‘Reverend’ ).
I had requested Bill to be one of the speakers in the recent Christmas special global online webinar of the organisation Ibaadatkhana, which promotes inter faith harmony. I am the patron of this organisation, Tasawar Jalali, who lives in San Jose, California is its Chairman, Irfan Ali, who lives in Princeton, New Jersey is its Vice Chairman, Naren Singh, who lives in California is its Gen Secy, and Ritu Jha who lives in California, and is the editor of indicanews.com, is the head of publicity and public relations.
The video recording of the webinar can be seen on my facebook page.
Bill had to decline my invitation due to prior commitments. He explained that this is the holiday season in America, and everyone’s calendar, including his own, is jampacked well in advance.
However, he sent this video recorded Christmas and New Year greetings.
Dr Vatsa and Valli have unscientific understanding of religions.
I recently saw this interview of Dr Aviral Vatsa, who is a medical practitioner living in Scotland, by Valli Bindana, a film maker who lives in California. Both are of Indian origin.
Dr Vatsa and Valli are both self proclaimed atheists ( as I am too ). However, there are two kinds of atheists, viz scientific atheists and unscientific atheists, and to my mind Dr Vatsa and Valli both belong to the second category. In other words, while they condemn religion, they have no scientific understanding about it, and the views they expressed in this interview are superficial, and lacking in any depth.
I have briefly expressed my views about religion in the articles below :
The first question that arises is how did religion come into existence ? Dr Vatsa attributes it entirely to fear and anxiety, and he rightly condemns ‘Babas’ who play on people’s anxieties and fears, and politicians who exploit religion for getting votes.
However, that is an oversimplification. No doubt fear and anxiety played a part in creation of religion, but one has to go deeper into the matter.
Religion arose initially as nature worship, and came into existence when humans evolved from lower creatures.
Animals do not have religion. But what differentiates a human from an animal is the faculty of reasoning. The early humans were surrounded by forces of nature, e.g. the sun, wind, fire, rain, etc which they could not understand. Hence they started believing they were supernatural beings e.g. Surya, Indra, Agni, and the other Vedic gods ( and similar nature gods in ancient Greece and Rome, among native Americans, who were earlier called Red Indians, etc ), These natural forces could benefit people, or harm them. Hence they had to be propitiated.
It is true that all religions are superstitions and unscientific, and obstruct critical thinking. But even today, despite all scientific advance in the world, most people are still religious. Why ? Let me explain.
Even today perhaps 75% people of the world, particularly in underdeveloped countries, are poor. Poor people need religion as a psychological support, as their lives are so miserable that they would go mad without this psychological support.
And even most of the better off people are also religious because the chance factor is still very powerful in their lives. They plan something, but very often something else happens. For instance, a businessman can start an enterprize, but despite all his planning it may fail ( due to a variety of reasons ). In other words, we often cannot control our lives.
The chance factor is powerful because of the low development of science even today, compared to what it will be in say 100 years from now. Then science will have developed so tremendously that poverty will have been abolished, and we will able to largely control our lives, and then there will be no need of religion.
Dr Vatsa says that if one is religious he/she has a licence to be immoral. I do not know how he has come to this conclusion. I know a large number of religious people who are also highly moral.
However, there are more fundamental objections to religion.
In his famous novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ the great Russian writer Dostoevsky asks ( through one of his characters ) if there is a God, why do so many children in the word suffer ?
If there is a God who is all powerful, merciful and all good, then why do millions of children in the world suffer from hunger, cold, lack of shelter, disease etc ? Why does God, who is said to be merciful, not have mercy on them and give them food, clothes, shelter, medicines, etc ?
Why is there so much poverty, unemployment, malnourishment, sickness etc in the world ? If God is powerful and merciful, why does he not abolish these and give everyone a decent life ?
When 6 million European Jews were being sent to gas chambers by the Nazis, why did God not save them ? Religious people have no answer.
As regards the dispute between creationists and evolutionists, I have already dealt with it in my article above. Religion is based on faith and divine revelation, science is based on observation, experiment and reasoning. Religion says there is a supernatural being called God, who is permanent and immortal. Science does not believe that there are any supernatural beings, and does not believe that anything is permanent. Science believes that the only reality is matter ( or rather matter-energy, as Einstein proved by his formula e=mc2 ), which is in different forms, and is in motion, in accordance with certain laws which can be discovered by scientific research. If one asks where did matter come from, the answer is that matter came from matter, in other words it always existed. If it is assumed that everything must have a Creator, then God too must have a Creator, i.e. a super God, and he too must have a Creator i.e. a super super God, and so on. This is known as the fallacy of the infinite regress.
Religion will disappear when the social basis which gives rise to religion, i.e. poverty, ignorance and exploitation of man by man, disappears. But that is still a far way off.
Though a confirmed atheist, I read books like Mahabharat and Ramayan not as religious books but as sociological ones. For instance Draupadi had 5 husbands ( the Pandava brothers ), which proves the existence of polyandry at that time. Now Draupadi is a respected lady, but when her ‘cheer haran’ was taking place publicly in the durbar, Karna says there is nothing wrong in disrobing her since she is like a prostitute, having 5 husbands.
This shows that at that time society was passing through a transitional stage, since polyandry is a feature of matriarchal society, but is abolished in the subsequent patriarchal society, which has polygamy ( i.e. a man can have many wives, but a woman can have only one husband ). So when that portion of the Mahabharat was written ( Mahabharat was evidently written over centuries by many persons, collectively known as Vyas, which only means a writer ) remnants of matriarchal society still existed, though it was rapidly being transformed into patriarchal society. So social values were clashing ( as they are today ).
I have also explained that Ram was a human, not a god, in the original Ramayan of Valmiki, but becomes a god 2000 years later in Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas. Unfortunately most people have not read the former, which is in Sanskrit, which most people do not know, and have only read the latter.
This shows how religion evolves according to people’s needs.
To give another example, Indra was a war god, and was the most important god in the Rigveda, which was written probably when the Aryans were entering India as warriors, and Indra was their chief. Later, he became a rain god, when Aryans had settled in India, and agriculture, not war, became their main activity. Indra then became a minor god, the more important becoming Ram, Krishna, Hanuman, Kali and Durga ( in Bengal ) and Murugan ( in Tamilnadu ), none of whom find mention in the Rigved
I conclude by showing how I am a confirmed atheist and yet a Hanuman bhakt
A fascist reign of terror has been imposed by the army and police in Pakistan, over ten thousand people have been arrested and jailed on false and frivolous charges, many beaten, tortured, killed, or just ‘disappeared’. The judges, who took an oath to protect the people’s rights, have become deaf and dumb and have turned a Nelson’s eye to these horrors, and the media has largely kowtowed before the Establishment. The people are reeling before the worst economic crisis in Pakistan’s history, with record unemployment, highly inflated electricity bills, and soaring prices of food and other essential commodities.
In this situation the lawyers of Pakistan have risen to the occasion, and are fighting back, bravely leading the struggle for democracy and the rule of law.
The Pakistan lawyers have recently decided to unite, and unitedly fight against this tyranny and trampling of human rights. They have formed the All Pakistan Lawyers Convention, and held their first meeting in the Supreme Court Bar Association in Islamabad. Here are some of the speeches delivered in that meeting :
A study of history shows that lawyers have given leadership to countries which were passing through a crisis in history. Thus, in the American Revolution ( 1775-81 ) most of the American leaders were lawyers, e.g. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, etc. The American President who led the nation during its Civil War ( 1861-65 ) was a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.
In the great French Revolution of 1789 over half the members of the French National Assembly were lawyers e.g. Robespierre, Danton, Prieur de la Marne, Billaud Varenne, etc
The leader of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin, was a lawyer ( though he practised only for a short while ).
Most of the leaders in India’s independence struggle were lawyers.
In Pakistan, the major cause of the downfall of the dictator Gen Parvez Musharraf, were Pakistan”s lawyers.
Why is it that lawyers were leaders of many countries in their hour of crisis ? That is because among all professions lawyers are closest to the people, and have society’s pulse. A doctor deals with medical problems, and an engineer with technical problems. So their knowledge of society’s problems is limited.
But a lawyer deals with legal problems, which are connected to society as a whole, and he interacts with people of all kinds and all walks of life–workers, farmers, teachers, govt servants, businessmen, people with matrimonial problems or property disputes, criminals, etc. Hence he best understands the needs and problems of society. Also, belonging to an independent profession, he does not have to kowtow before anyone. Hence he is often the best person to lead the people.
In the situation prevailing in Pakistan today, with most people living in fear, the Pakistan lawyers are the fittest to lead the people in these dark times. And they are doing their duty fearlessly, valiantly, and undauntedly
In the special session of the Indian Parliament which will be sitting from September 18-22, among the other bills will be a bill for increasing women’s representation in Parliament and state legislatures to 33%
I regard this as a gimmick, for two reasons :
1. In our semi-feudal society in India, most ( not all ) women, particularly in rural areas, are housewives who loyally obey their husbands. Experience has shown that when they get elected to gaon sabhas, zila panchayats or municipal corporations ( due to laws for women’s representation in these bodies ), they really function as the mouthpieces of their husbands, and obey their orders. In other words, the person who is really operating and calling the shots behind the scene is the pradhanpati, panchayatpati, or municipal councillorpati. We also had Rabri Devi as Chief Minister of Bihar, but everyone knew that the real Chief Minister behind the scene was Lalu Yadav.
So if the proposed bill is passed we will have mostly MPpatis and MLApatis behind the women MPs and MLAs who will tell the latter what they should say and do.
2. It is wrong to believe that all women are good, kind, caring, and concerned about the people’s welfare. The truth is that they are usually as selfish, ruthless, vicious, cold blooded, heartless, and callous as the menfolk.
For instance, in Shakespeare’s play ‘Macbeth’, while Macbeth was wavering whether to kill King Duncan or not, Lady Macbeth was adamant that this should be done, and she kept egging him on.
In the Nazi concentration camps the female guards like like Irma Griese, Ilse Koch, Maria Mandl, Dorothea Binz, Herta Bothe etc at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen Belsen, Majdanek, Ravensbruck, etc were as ruthless and cruel towards prisoners as the male guards.
Indira Gandhi was ruthless and power crazy, and for retaining her Prime Ministership after the Allahabad High Court verdict holding her guilty of election malpractices and disqualifying her for 6 years, imposed a fake Emergency in 1975, in which thousands were jailed on false charges and all kinds of atrocities on the people were committed. Parliament was turned into a rubber stamp, and a ‘committed’ judiciary created.
Numerous other such examples can be given e.g. ‘Bloody’ Queen Mary of England, Dowager Empress Cixi of China, the serial killer Aileen Wuornos of America, etc
So women’s representation is just a stunt,which will be of no benefit to the Indian people.
Bill Tammeus ( email : wtammeus@gmail.com ) is an American who had come with his father, an agricultural expert, to India in 1957-58 with his family, and was my classmate in my school, the Boys High School, Allahabad. He then went back with his family to America, and became a journalist in the Kansas City Star ( the newspaper for which the great American writer Ernest Hemingway once worked ).
Bill, now 78, has since then retired, and spends his time doing various social work, including preaching in his Presbyterian Church. He has sent me his recent speech, in which he has referred to me briefly towards the end ( from 19 minutes 38 seconds onwards ).
I sent him my response : ” Reverend Thank you for quoting me in your speech. However, you said right in the beginning ” All sin comes down to idolatry ”.
This remark would offend most Hindus ( and there are about 1200 million of them ) who believe and worship numerous gods.
What is wrong in idolatry, and how do you equate it with sin ? Can an idolater not be a good man so long as he does no harm to anyone ? Does he cut off anyone’s head or chop off anyone’s limbs by believing and worshipping many gods ? With respect, I think ur remark is silly Markandey
Bill responded : ” Your Justiceness: Idolatry means worshipping someone who — or something that — is not God. The first of the Ten Commandments says, in the old language, “Thou shall have no other gods before me.”
If you worship other beings or other things, you have cut off your relationship with God. Hindus who pay homage to clay idols are not exactly worshipping those idols. Rather, they are using them as a pathway to God. Something similar goes on with all the iconography found in Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.
One doesn’t worship the icons. Rather, they are a window through which one may get a better view of God. And although some fundamentalist Christians seem to worship the Bible, the Bible is not to be worshipped. Rather, it is to be seen as a means by which God is revealed.
So once more we have something theological about which to argue. Good. Cheers,
Udayanidhi Stalin, a Minister in the DMK government in Tamil Nadu, and son of the Chief Minister MK Stalin, in a speech has called Sanatan Dharma as a disease like malaria, dengue, corona, etc, which has to be eradicated. His speech has stoked up a row
Some DMK supporters have said that Udayanidhi meant the caste system which causes social injustice when he referred to Sanatan Dharma
Udayanidhi has clarified subsequently that when he spoke about Sanatan Dharma he was speaking against the caste system which discriminates against lower castes
The fact however remains that most Hindus equate Sanatan Dharma with the Hindu religion, and are deeply offended by the speech
Udayanidhi’s speech has recoiled against the INDIA alliance of opposition parties, many of which have dissociated themselves from the speech
In my opinion there would have been nothing wrong if Udayanidhi had spoken only against the caste system ( to which I too am opposed ) without referring to Sanatan Dharma.
If he had apologised and said that he was only against the caste system the controversy would have come to an end. But perhaps that is too much to expect from a Crown Prince
It seems that life in Pakistan has become hellish, with exorbitant electricity bills, skyrocketing prices of food, gas cylinder, petrol; medicines, etc, record unemployment, and fascist reign of terror unleashed by the Pakistan army and police, so that many Pakistanis want to migrate to a foreign country.
Some are even willing to migrate to BJP ruled India, as this email which I received today from a Pakistani Muslim discloses ( he requested me not to reveal his name or address )
” Assalaam Valekum Sir,
I am xxxxx from xxxx Pakistan.
Sir kaise hain aap ?
Main aapka follower hun aur aapka fan bhi. Sir aap to hamaare mulk ke halaat jaante hain.
Sir aap mujhe yeh bataa sakte hain ki kya mujhe India ki nationality mil sakti hai India mein rehne ke liye ? Kyonki mera mulk Pakistan bilkul tabaah ho chuka hai, aur yahaan jeena ab naamumkin hai.
Many people from both India and Pakistan have asked me how I say that India and Pakistan are really one nation, only temporarily divided by the British swindle called Partition, on the basis of the bogus two nation theory ( that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations ), but are bound to reunite again under a secular government.
I replied that we share the same culture, look like each other, many of us speak the same language Hindustani ( which Indians call Hindi and Pakistanis call Urdu ), and we were one since Mughal times.
No doubt much time has passed since 1947, but West and East Germany were reunited in 1990 after 45 years partition, and North and South Vietnam in 1975 after 30 years partition. So time is immaterial.
I have given many video interviews and written many articles in this connection, so instead of repeating what I said, I am posting the links below :
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is prominently in the news these days, and I have been his strong supporter on the social media for long ( though I have never personally met him and am not connected to him in any way ), as he is bravely leading the democratic forces in Pakistan. against the fascist reign of terror unleashed by the Pakistan Establishment
There was an Indian cricketer named William Ghosh, who played first class cricket for the Indian Railways from 1949 to 1968 ( though he never played in a Test match ).
William Ghosh was a friend of Imran Khan’s father, who persuaded Imran to come to Allahabad ( my home town ) in 1984 to play a William Ghosh benefit cricket match, whose proceeds would go to Ghosh, who was then in some financial distress.
The match was played in the huge Madan Mohan Malviya cricket stadium in Allahabad, with a massive crowd of spectators, all eager to see the legendary cricketer.
I was then a lawyer in Allahabad High Court, and when I heard that the celebrity Imran Khan would be playing I decided to take the day off from court and witness the match along with my son Vikram, who was then 9 years old..
Imran flew from Pakistan to Delhi, and then travelled to Allahabad by train. I was told that on the train he ate orange after orange, and little else.
Imran captained the Geep XI team in the match. This was in the winter of 1984, and I still remember he wore a white woollen pullover with red border.
His team bowled first, and we all wanted to see his fast swing bowling. Unfortunately, some time before this match Imran had suffered a serious leg injury, and had been advised by his doctors not to run for a few months. So Imran did bowl, but he bowled without any run up, standing near the bowler’s end, near the umpire. Even then he captured some wickets.
When his team’s turn came to bat, Imran played a fantastic innings which Allahabadis who saw the match would never forget.
Since he could not run due to his injury, he decided to hit boundaries and sixes only, to avoid running between the wickets.. His sixes dwarfed the size of the MMM stadium, with the ball landing outside on each occasion. If I remember correctly, he scored about 80 runs before being caught near the edge of the field while attempting another six, and his team won the match.
All this happened almost 40 years ago, but the recollection and flashback of that memorable day is embedded permanently in my mind
